It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the
newspaper business is hurting these days, but for science journalists --
ordinary people tasked with communicating extraordinarily complex ideas
to a mass audience -- the challenges faced within this waning industry
are particularly exigent.

In 1989, the number of newspapers with weekly science sections was 95. Today, that number is down to 14, according to
the Columbia Journalism Review. That’s a big drop, even for one of the
fastest declining industries in the country. Figures from the U.S.
Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that the
newspaper industry as a whole has shrunk by 40 percent
over the last decade, so clearly newspaper companies have tough choices
to make when it comes to which sections get the ax. But few people
agree on where that ax should fall.